careful.'
'Next item, chair covers. Same design as the curtains, excellent condition, look. With antimacassars thrown in.'
Mason didn't bid again, and Johnson got the chair covers for Denton at six dollars. 'He's a funny fellow, old Mason,' Johnson whispered. 'He was just trying it on, to see what you'd do. He does that with everyone, he doesn't really mean any harm.'
'And last but not least,' Jones called out, 'a solid teak desk, which you see in front of me. Three drawers, top one lockable. Our departed colleague penned his billydoos on this desk. And if you're lucky you may find one inside still.'
'Get on with it Jonesy,' a voice called out in weary encouragement.
'You can sign a chit and give it to Jones, he's the mess treasurer anyway,' Johnson was saying to Denton.
'I'm trying to work out what it comes to in English money.'
'About two pounds altogether.' Johnson stirred his tea rhythmically, round and round, the spoon clinking against the same place on the cup each time.
'No offers for this beautiful solid teak desk?' Jones asked plaintively, with a show of incredulity, over the rising sound of inattentive voices. People had begun to leave the room. 'No offers at all?'
Denton gulped. 'Ten dollars,' he called out in a high, unsteady voice.
'Ten dollars?' Jones cupped his ear. 'Did I hear ten dollars?'
Denton nodded.
The desk was his.
'Well you soon got the hang of it, didn't you?' Johnson said encouragingly. He drank his tea down and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. 'Tibby Mason must've put you on your mettle. Did you really want that?'
'I suppose I'll want to write letters and things in my room sometimes,' Denton replied unsteadily. He felt his heart thumping slightly with surprise at his own audacity.
8
HE SAT IN HIS NIGHTSHIRT at his new desk, stroking the thick yellow varnish with his finger-tips. The curtains and covers lay neatly folded on the armchair. He glanced round at them once more, then dipped his pen in the ink bottle and began to write.
Dear Mother and Father. Arrived safely today, after hot but interesting voyage. Keeping well, hope you are too. Also hope you got the letters I have been sending. Weather here is very hot and sticky. Was met off the boat and shown - paused, thinking of the severed head swinging round on its queue, then went on - a few sights on the way to the above address where I am now settling in. Picture on other side shows Customs Headquarters. Have been measured for my uniform already, which they can make in one day. Long letter follows soon. Love, John.
He left the postcard on the desk and went to the bathroom. Dipping his toothbrush into the round, silvery tin of Dr Mill's Dental Powder, he started brushing his teeth. He had opened all the windows and shutters. Though it was after eleven o'clock, the street below was just as noisy as it had been in the morning. He listened to the hoarse, outlandish cries and shouts as he contemplated the white foam round his lips in the mirror. Would he ever get used to them, understand them? Darkness had fallen suddenly at seven o'clock, as he had come to expect on the ship, and the steward, whom everyone addressed as 'boy,' and whose silent presence still made him uncomfortable, had come and lit the gas lamps with a gentle plop that reminded him of home.
He wandered to the window, still brushing vigorously. Oil lamps flared over fruit stalls in the street below and glimmered in the poky little shops that crammed cheek by jowl against each other. Rickshaw coolies shouted their way raucously through the crowd, and a sedan chair floated past, preceded by a man with a lamp. The stall lights flickered over the chair, and through the uncurtained window he glimpsed a woman's face peering out with gleaming eyes. Further along, two British soldiers were strolling in their new khaki uniforms. Denton turned away, suddenly remembering his brother dead at Mafeking. If he'd had a khaki uniform there, instead of that proud scarlet one, the Boer sharpshooters might never have got him.
He had taken a mouthful of water from the tumbler and spat it out into the enamel pail below the marble wash-stand, before he realised that the water might not have been boiled. He brushed his teeth again fiercely, with a big cake of dental powder on the brush, and spat once more into the pail, this time without rinsing. A faint unease stirred in his stomach. Could Smith's cholera germs still be in the room?
The steward had replaced the bucket in the toilet box when he made the bed, and Denton sat on the seat, enjoying the freshness. His stomach was what his mother would have called loose. He got up and washed his hands, brushing his nails thoroughly.
Reaching up to the lamp, he pulled the lever down, avoiding the sticky brown flypaper hanging from it, on which several small black flies were hopelessly mired, feebly wriggling their legs and flapping their wings. The light faded; a blue flame licked round the mantle, then went out with a terminal plop. He walked barefoot to the bedroom, draped the mosquito curtain round the bed and turned the light out there too. Ducking under the curtain, he lay down.
The air was still and heavy, pressing warmly down on him. He was sweating under his nightshirt. He pushed the sheet down to his feet and lay on his back, hands clasped behind his head, watching the dim shadows from the passing lights in the street below flickering across the ceiling.
Closing his eyes, he clasped his hands over his chest and whispered a prayer, as he had done, secretly, every night in his berth on the Orcades. He remembered to add a prayer for the executed pirates. His eyes opened again on the flickering shadows. His arms beneath the nightshirt were sweaty. So were his chest and neck. He undid all the buttons down to his waist and pulled the nightshirt open. Forlorn images of home came straying through his mind: his mother in her apron, cooking at the large black grate in the kitchen; his father with his scarred hands crossed in his lap, seated immovably in the corner, silent and brooding. He saw Emily with her parents at the Easter service, her wavy brown hair falling loose beneath her wide-brimmed hat, the soft curls round her neck as she knelt to pray. He stirred despite himself and his fingers brushed the bare skin of his chest as if he were stroking her arm, her shoulder, her throat. To punish himself for his impurity, he forced himself to recall the horror of the execution that morning. But somehow praying for the dead men's souls had dulled the frightfulness, moved their deaths to a different plane, more distant, less disturbing. And it was Emily's lips that came into his mind now, fresher and more vivid than the ritual cruelty that had stunned and sickened him only a few hours before.
He turned onto his side and thought determinedly of the things that had happened to him since he left the Orcades, of the new curtains and chair covers and desk, of the pamphlets he would begin studying tomorrow. Soon he was thinking only of his temerity in bidding at the auction, of the Orcades sailing on to Japan, of the weird sing-song sound of the Chinese language.... A mosquito was whining somewhere near his ear. His watch was hanging by its chain from the brass bedrail, which gleamed softly in the dimness and he wondered whether he'd wound it properly, willing himself to reach up and check. But his lids were heavy now and it seemed such a big, tiring effort.... That mosquito was whining by his ear again and he must check his watch, in a minute he would reach up for it....
He woke up with a jolt, his eyes wide and fearful. He was lying on his back, the filmy gauze of the mosquito net veiling the menacing shadows that lurked and shifted round about him. For a moment he wondered why the ship wasn't rocking, where the other berths in the cabin had got to, but then he heard the raucous voices outside laughing and shouting, and something that sounded like a violin only it made weird, screeching, endlessly undulating sounds, not like music at all really, just a continuously repeated wailing. He remembered with a sudden, hopeless, forlorn drop in his stomach that he was not safe on the boat, he was alone in China, in Shanghai. He must think of something nice and peaceful. Like the ship when he left England for instance: the band playing at Tilbury Dock, the people shouting and waving, the paper streamers whirring through the drizzly air. He'd kissed Emily on the cheek, stiffly and shyly in front of his parents, and she'd turned her face away blushing, her fair skin glowing right down to her throat. Perhaps further - no, he mustn't think of that. He thought instead of his father gripping his hat with one clawed, mottled